lls,--who carried their victorious arms into India on the east,
Syria and Asia Minor on the west, but even more famous for being defeated
at Marathon and Thermopylae. By the side of these columns sat the great
kings of Persia, giving audience to ambassadors from distant lands. Here,
perhaps, sat Cyrus himself, the founder of the Persian monarchy, and
issued orders to rebuild Jerusalem. Here the son of Xerxes, the Ahasuerus
of Scripture, may have brought from Susa the fair Esther. For this is the
famous Persepolis, and on those loftier platforms, where only ruinous
heaps of stones now remain, stood that other palace, which Alexander
burned in his intoxication three hundred and thirty years before Christ.
"Solitary in their situation, peculiar in their character," says Heeren,
"these ruins rise above the deluge of years which has overwhelmed all the
records of human grandeur around them, and buried all traces of Susa and
Babylon. Their venerable antiquity and majestic proportions do not more
command our reverence, than the mystery which involves their construction
awakens the curiosity of the most unobservant spectator. Pillars which
belong to no known order of architecture, inscriptions in an alphabet
which continues an enigma, fabulous animals which stand as guards at the
entrance, the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the
walls,--all conspire to carry us back to ages of the most remote
antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a doubtful and
wavering light."

Diodorus Siculus says that at Persepolis, on the face of the mountain,
were the tombs of the kings of Persia, and that the coffins had to be
lifted up to them along the wall of rock by cords. And Ctesias tells us
that "Darius, the son of Hystaspes, had a tomb prepared for himself in the
double mountain during his lifetime, and that his parents were drawn up
with cords to see it, but fell and were killed." These very tombs are
still to be seen on the face of the mountain behind the ruins. The figures
of the kings are carved over them. One stands before an altar on which a
fire is burning. A ball representing the sun is above the altar. Over the
effigy of the king hangs in the air a winged half-length figure in fainter
lines, and resembling him. In other places he is seen contending with a
winged animal like a griffin.

All this points at the great Iranic religion, the religion of Persia and
its monarchs for many centuries, the religion